At a time when the realty sector is waiting to collapse further, ‘Property World,’ a dedicated real estate monthly magazine, has been launched by UBM India, a subsidiary of United Business Media, a US $2.5 bn company listed on the London stock exchange. The magazine seeks to provide quality and unbiased coverage of the property industry and is targeted at real estate developers, private equity investors, home loan providers among other industry professionals.

India is going to polls in April-May to elect members to the federal Parliament and two publishers have considered this to be the right time to launch their general-interest magazines. Ankush Publications' Chauthi Duniya (Fourth World), a Sunday newspaper that was closed down in 1992, has been resurrected, while RPG Publications' launched 'Open' that will compete largely with India Today and Outlook magazines.

I visited a couple of Indian cities in the last 2 weeks and the outdoor hoardings tell a tale of the times: Advertising budgets have sharply shrunk. At key, heavy-traffic junctions, almost 30-70% hoardings stare in your face with phone numbers of the agencies, almost pleading 'Pls fill me up'. In the recent past, most of the hoardings were taken up by television companies and magazine publishers. Most of the non-media advertisers had disappeared quite sometime ago.

- Bhupesh Trivedi
Feedback/Comments welcome at: publisher (at) chronosphere (dot) biz